SoD P8 Mage Healer - Don't make us cast Regeneration

In Development Season of Discovery Patch 1.15.7 PTR
1

Hello. I’m Kenneth, mage healer for Btribe and Wowhead guide writer for the spec. Mage healer currently does very strong damage as Frost and very high raidwide HPS. Nerfing mage would be warranted in P8, but the levers chosen to accomplish this are very poor.

Regeneration has not seen substantial use in many phases because it is a clunky spell that competes with strong runes. On the latest PTR build, nerfs went live that will force us to use Regeneration if we want high MR uptime. This fixes none of the issues that Regeneration has always had, but strongarms us into using it anyway. Here are the issues, as I see them:

  1. Regeneration competes with Fingers of Frost and Enlightenment. This means we cannot justify taking it as frost and the cost for taking it as arcane is still very high
  2. Regeneration does very low healing and has the opportunity cost of a GCD that could be used to heal your current Temporal Beacon targets
  3. Regeneration is a channeled spell, meaning we cannot spellqueue it. The client does not support frequent casts of Regeneration without unavoidable downtime
  4. Frequent uses of Regeneration do not fit SoD encounter design. We cannot enter a phase of low healing and then ramp up to a burst of high healing because SoD encounters do not fit that damage pattern.
  5. Set bonuses that synergize with Regeneration have a strong opportunity cost compared to using set bonuses that give damage. I ignored T2.5, Healer T3, and would ignore healer T3.5 if these changes go through.

A quick response poll to these PTR changes showed 90% of players not wanting to cast Regeneration. Even though most players agree mage healer needs nerfs, leave regeneration in the basement.

The core gameplay loop of our spec is to maintain Mass Regeneration beacons on 1-4 groups and maximize uptime of offensive spells to increase both our damage and healing. We are seven phases deep into Season of Discovery. Mages still playing at this point enjoy that gameplay loop. Nerfs should come in the form of % damage or sqrt scaled healing nerfs, not nerfs that change our gameplay loop to something people do not find fun.

44 Likes
2

Please don’t ever try to make me channel a single Regeneration. All these changes are going to do is make mage healers swap to dps or reroll because we’re already geared for this playstyle. Nobody wants this. You’re effectively removing healers from the player pool with these changes. If you were going to do this, it should’ve been 4 phases ago. It’s too late, everyone’s already invested.

Nerfs are tolerable, complete playstyle overhauls are unacceptable this late into the game’s life. Please reconsider these changes. Current mage healing already comes with drawbacks. If you want more, maybe attach some form of damage reduction to the mass regen and regen runes or nerf the zg 5set bonus. Reduce the duration of mass regen’s temporal beacon through base kit or set bonuses. Any of these changes over reworking the entire gameplay loop of mage healing.

8 Likes
3

I disagree, I love these new changes and I hope they stay. Ive always wanted Regeneration to be useful and im glad it is now. thank you @zirene and @aggrend.

4 Likes
4

Unfortunately blizzard has been off the pulse of mage healer since phase 4. We have gotten so much tier that benefits regeneration, and still to this day no one wants to cast it.

Blizzard wants us to cast regen, and wants us to like it.

I thought maybe that with infusion of souls there maybe a play for using regen + wardshaper, but that trinket only affects dmging spells.

sigh.

2 Likes
5

Not true, they completely changed Priest shielding last phase theres plenty of time to give us new playstyle changes, im looking forward to these nerfs and new regeneration bonuses. This will make healing for all healers much more fun as with the priest shield nerf.

1 Like
6

First forum post in over a decade to give a big fat +1 to Kenneth’s comments. Please don’t move forward with these changes, there are better ways.

4 Likes
7

Mage healer needs a nerf, but holy god is this not it. It will fundamentally change how we play and make us incredibly clunky. I remember how much of a meme it felt like to play a mage healer before we got set bonus’s to increase temporal beacon duration so we could have more uptime. This would be even worse than it was back then.

6 Likes
8

I absolutely agree that mage healing needs a nerf, but this is not the way to do it. While it would be great if we utilized our kit - regeneration included - the fact remains that nobody uses it despite attempts to incentivize it through set bonuses.

Since Mass regen and Regen are both channelled spells, and come with the issues inherent with such spells from a technical standpoint, there is little reason to ever do more than cast it for the beacon, and cancel the cast. Forcing us to use regen to reduce the cooldown of mass regen is a hamfisted way to try to get us to use our kit. I would love for it to be a meaningful spell, and would love for there to be a reason to hard cast the full channel of either spell, but please, not this.

The way we have to be casting regen in order to cast mass regen as frequently as we like is at odds with the arcane blast stack mechanic as well, you will have very little opportunity or choice to stack your blasts higher.

2 Likes
9

Gonna respost my topic here cuz i feel like this one is gonna get a lot more traction and maybe be seen by the DEVs unlike mine

As a player im asking myself, “why” these changes? what was the problem here?

  • Our dmg?
  • Frost healer dmg?
  • Beacon on 4 groups at all times?
  • 70%+ overhealing

Honestly i dont mind using Regeneration in conjunction with mass regeneration, what i do think it will be horrible gameplaywise is to apply a beacon on an entire party with mass regen and NOT heal that party cuz i have to cast regens to reduce the next mass regen CD

I would be fine with the changes if regen somehow offered some beacon healing (Heals your target for “X” and all beacons for “Y”), this way i can use mass regen to cover groups taking damage, and use single target regen to cover some targets in a group i dont want to mass regen (cuz i would still be healing everyone since regen would heal beacons)

However i 100% dislike having my reduction TRIPLED with 4p, that makes me feel bad for NOT HAVING 4p, instead of feeling good while having, Maybe change it to 2s baseline and 1s extra with tier or 3s baseline and change that tier entirely

I mostly play arcane healer, so im not in the group of ppl thats concerned with the removel of frost as a healer, HOWEVER, we need something after putting 31 points into arcane, cuz it feels rly bad atm to have soo many waste talent points

I am however a HUGE enjoyer of the “beacons everyone all the time 90% overhealing” playstyle, would like for the class to stay similar to this in some way, even if at reduced values for balance sake.

TLDR: Im fine with regen playstyle, just gotta have regen healing beacons (mass regen only applying its fine), 4p needs to change so we dont feel bad for not having it and we need impactful talents after filling 31 points in arcane. pls let me beacon everyone all the time, brain feels good.

4 Likes
10

Not sure, I think these nerfs are great. Especially for the other healers in the game. Just like priests were, mages are too oppressive. This nerf still allows us to be fun healers while not being too strong that we make our cohealers time worse.

A super smart person told me that “some people just don’t view healing as a team effort and care about their personal spec” and I think thats exactly whats happening here.

Too many mages liked being so oppressive and clearly NOT caring about their healer raid team and now that its being taken away from them they are complaining as they only care about their personal spec.

For me who plays both Priest and Mage Healer I welcome this change and I hope it sticks. I always felt bad super outhealing all my co-healers.

11

The change is just a wrong step in the right direction of correcting oppressive mage healing. The right direction would be to redesign regen so it is not a channel, is castable while moving, or something else. As it stands, there is little benefit, even with CD reduction, to cast a full regen, and just feels awful.

If we can’t be strong at multiple group healing, there has to be some compensation to make up for what we lose. Spot healing and tank healing are two areas, especially with the 6p rewind damage reduction incentivizing rewind only on certain targets, that could use some love with these changes.

3 Likes
12

You’re missing the point here. i feel like you’re a player that play the other healing classes and is bothered about mage healing (i too myself play priest and mage as healers)

We agree with you that we need nerfs, we are disagreeing on the “how”, they’re nerfing us by reworking our class, you gave positive feed back to this awful rework idea (regen) imo just to “yeah nerf mages hahaha” without understanding our POV

Pls dont give feedback like that, its fine to say “i think yall need nerfs, yall might not like that way they’re doing that right now, but you do need nerfs” for the reasons you just posted

2 Likes
13

Not laughing at you, I just think the new playstyle will be fun while also being more fair to the cohealers. That quote I gave was made by Kenneth himself not even a troll post. I think this nerf is plenty fine, is it a playstyle change? Absolutely. But as you know Priests also had a major playstyle change and we ended up being fine.

I think Mages are too oppressive, and I actually do believe the nerf we got was fair. This just means we have to move over to Arcane. I cant wait to check out the new playstyle and have some fun with it.

14

Healing mage playstyle is to raid heal. Maintain beacons on many parties, then do damage to heal them.

Step 1: Make mass regen and regen baseline 1.5s channels, healing every 0.5 seconds. That’s how we use those spells anyway. Increase the temporal beacon duration by 1.5 seconds (it refreshes as you channel it, so we don’t lose total time). Adjust previous set bonuses that refer to this to compensate (missile barrage doesn’t speed up regen, but instead doubles its healing, and T3 four piece gives a movement speed buff that lasts 3 seconds regardless of how long regen is channeled).

Step 2: Give us some options to extend beacon durations. Instead of CDR for mass regen to beacon more groups, but doing no damage. Make a set bonus “Regeneration can be used on enemies. When done so, it becomes deconstruction, dealing damage and increasing the duration of all temporal beacons by 1 second.” It deals damage and heals. It’s less damage than other spells, but extends beacons.

Step 2-b: when refreshing a temporal beacon, don’t set it to a duration, add duration. So if using mass regen, add 25 seconds. If they had ten seconds left, now it’s 35 seconds. Up to a max of 40 or whatever (I think the current highest duration is 36, so that if you feel so inclined).

Now we have a lot of choices for how to maintain beacons. We have a reason to use regeneration that fits our play style. And we’re freed up to have GOOD set bonuses, and MAYBE this would even get us out of wearing T2 gear.

15

You keep saying ‘we’, but you’re obviously not a mage.

5 Likes
16

I agree with OP. Been playing arcane mage since phase 1 and have hundreds of hours or raiding experience on the class.

The CORE gameplay of mages is spell slinging at enemies. In that respect, the mage healing spec really worked well. It is very fun to get some beacons on your team and then blast your target with everything you have. It’s an entertaining juggling act that requires dealing with all aspects of dps and healing at the same time.

But essentially, being able to blanket 3-4 groups with beacons is too overpowered and I agree. While Mass Regeneration absolutely needed a nerf, I don’t think this is the correct one. Or rather, tying its power with single Regeneration usage is what’s wrong.

Single Regen does not feel good to use. It’s the same power as Mass Regeneration, but it’s 5 times weaker. Also, standing still channeling something to heal for laughable amounts isn’t fun either. Mage’s CORE gameplay is to spend as much time as possible flinging spells at our enemies, not targeting our teammates with super slow channeling spells.

This does not turn us into better single-target healers either, which we are bad at. If you’re going to reduce our raid-wide healing (which is warranted), we need something in return to compensate for that, because raid-wide heal is our only niche.

There are many ways the amount of raid-wide heal we produce could have been reduced. These changes do accomplish that, but they change the FUNDAMENTAL playstyle of our class, turning our primary target to something else than what’s got a red name. This is wrong.

1 Like
17

I am, play one as a alt. Main Priest Healer though which is why im more critical. I do welcome these changes though.

18

Getting a nerf is fair. Changing our entire core playstyle is not.

Also, we aren’t good at anything else besides healing raid-wide damage. Every other healing class outshines us at utility and single-target healing by a wide margin. Our DPS is below a tank’s.

If we get our raid-wide ability removed, then what are we good for? We need to get major buffs in other areas to compensate for it.

2 Likes
19

I’m fully convinced you’re just trolling at this point. You seem to have no real understanding of mage healing and how these changes impact it.

2 Likes
20

This happened to priests rightfully so just a phase ago. Id argue we should have been nerfed the same time so it wasnt abrupt but if Priests entire healing rotation was changed I dont see why it cant happen to another class.

Im not trolling. Harboring a different opinion than you ≠ trolling. I said I do understand how it drastically changes mage healing, Im just saying you arent the only ones who dealt with a change in healing playstyle.